Love Hotel

Anyone for a bit of Roman Porno? Yes. Good, as here we go with Shinji Somai’s 1985 entry into Nikkatsu’s series of sex films; so don your dark-glasses and disguise and check into his Love Hotel, another entry in Third Window’s Director’s Company releases.  

Lost in debt to the yakuza over his failing publishing company, Muraki (Minori Terada) decides to kill himself and take another with him. Calling for a prostitute at a love hotel, in walks Yumi (Noriko Hayami), and he finds in her something that stops himself from killing her and himself.

Two-years later, working as a taxi driver to pay off his debts, Muraki sees Yumi, who is now working for a company, having an affair with her boss and being blackmailed by the people that prostituted her. Can they perhaps save each other?

I am reminded of Third Window’s earlier Pink Films volumes 1 to 6 releases. Though Love Hotel is not a true pink film, being this is a major studio work, it nevertheless shares a similarity in how those films were definitely not pornography and those wishing for no more than tantalising nudity would be better served turning off their internet safe search and inputting a few well (or poorly) chosen search terms. So if anyone is potentially turned off by the Roman Porno banner, don't be. 

Yes, Love Hotel does have nudity, sex and the classic Japanese blurring of the image to obscure any full frontal nudity, but that’s really by the by, because Love Hotel is something else.  

Quite what that "something else" is feels almost ambiguous and that is a good thing. As the film started it brought to mind aspects of Shinya Tsukamoto’s brilliant A Snake of June (still for my money his best film), as a clearly desperate and deranged Muraki forces Yumi to use a vibrator while tied up. Sounds bad taste? Yes but no. Like Tsukamoto, it's all about how a scene or a theme is handled, and there is clearly the necessity of a certain amount of Roman Porno sex and nudity, but importantly though there is an aspect of violence, it is not anything that the film revels in, nor does it try to eroticise the theme beyond a reasonable degree. If that term seems unpleasing I can understand why, but again it is a matter of handling of the subject matter. Think of how many 70’s Japanese Roman Pornos or Pinky Violence films have grinning men slavering over women, happy to try and torture them, in this case it is rather that here is one damaged and desperate person, temporarily in a state of insanity and, as we shall see, there will be mirror images of this. Characters will change places as their situations echo through the film. Most importantly Somai is trying to do something with the Roman Porno genre, by subtly undermining it whilst also allowing it to seem as what an audience might expect from the label.  

It’s a terrific balancing act, because the film unfolds in a series of scenes where often the camera follows its characters without cutting, giving them space to live and breathe. Whether this is a sexual encounter or a domestic scene it doesn’t matter and for the most part sex and nudity is integrated into the story so that it is a natural part of life, often of intimacy, even if in some cases in that intimacy we may find a wasted act. Nothing about this is teenage fantasy, and those fantasy moments are usually undermined.

So really it is a focus on character, with some aspects of sex, such as we might see in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut or even Melanie Griffith's Working Girl, and that’s really the point. Muraki, we find, is still in a relationship with his ex-wife (who is raped by the yakuza to pay off part of his debt), and the delicate emotional balancing act continues, just as it does when he sees Yumi and we discover her life, one which seems like it may be in a better state but is really just as precarious. These two people become closer, and their parallels become apparent, and we the viewer are inveigled into their lives. Importantly we care about them. We are not sure what will make them happy but they become real to us. This, is unusual in such a film, and a real testament to Somai’s directorial skill, and in that way it is similar again to A Snake of June. Granted. it's not as enthralling  visually but Somai is not going for this, he is pulling his audience into intimacy with his characters in a different way. Both films are effective in different ways.  

The performances, are strangely effective too. There is a naturalness on display that you don't immediately associate with Roman Porno, wherein either lead could step out of this film and into some gentle countryside PG-rated drama. You suspect this may be down to Somai's influence and his willingness to allow his actors to move through a scene without cuts that may cause them to lose the mood.

What matters though is we come out the other end of this film feeling different. Love Hotel could be generic tosh; nudity with some semblance of plot thrown around it, but not here. Don't allow yourself to be put off by labels, it’s a thoughtful, careful, delicate, intimately filmed piece of art. This could be a director slumming it, but it is a director taking a genre apart and giving us what we needed, even if we never knew we did.

Can we really ask for anything more?